Archdiocese says no one authorized to video ordination

The St. Louis archdiocese has denied it authorized anyone to attend a women’s ordination ceremony to make a video recording of it.

That the “archdiocese of St. Louis authorized the video recording of a Catholic women’s ordination’ is untrue,” the archdiocese said in a letter to NCR.

Citing sources familiar with the archdiocese’s case against St. Louis Sister of Charity Louise Lears, the NCR Web site published a story July 10 saying that the archdiocese had authorized someone to attend the ceremony for the purpose of video recording it.

In the July 10 story, sources said that an affidavit exists in the Acta, or files, on Lears, sanctioning someone to attend to record the ceremony.

The archdiocese’s letter to NCR, signed by St. Louis Bishop Robert Hermann , archdiocesan administrator, and Msgr. John Shamleffer, judicial vicar, stated: “The ‘affidavit giving permission to an individual to attend the ceremony in order to record it’ does not exist.”

Shamleffer is out of town this week and Hermann declined to be interviewed for this story, according to Anne Steffens, chief communications officer for the archdiocese.

Steffens, however, was quoted in a news article that appeared in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, following the NCR story, saying that the archdiocese “had, indeed, sent a witness to the ordinations,” adding that that witness “did not tape the event.”

In apparent dispute is a document in Lears’ file. The file contains the substance of the case against her and it led to the decision by Archbishop Raymond Burke, her judge, to banish her last month from all archdiocesan ministries.

Lears had been a pastoral associate at St. Cronan Church in the St. Louis inner city and served in the archdiocesan department of religious education.

Sources had told NCR the document in Lears’ file, which they described as an “affidavit” sanctioned someone to attend the women’s rite, held in a synagogue last November.

The Post Disptach story quoted the archdiocese as saying the document at issue was not an “affidavit” but “actually a witness statement from someone who witnessed the attempted ordination.”

Part of the problem in identifying or characterizing the document stems from the fact that the archdiocese’s files are confidential.

Lears and her canon lawyer, J. Michael Ritty, were allowed to view the files and take notes from the files, but were not allowed to remove them or to copy them.

Lears has refused interviews in the wake of the decree by Burke June 26. Ritty said he would not be interviewed while Lears’ case was in appeal.

The day after Burke made his judgment against Lears, he was appointed to a Vatican post as the prefect of the Apostolic Signatura.

The archdiocese’s letter to NCR stated that it “never videotaped nor requested any videotaping of the event.” It added that the “attempted ordination was public, recorded by local and statewide media and placed on the Internet. The video was easily accessible from a variety of mediums without us having to record it ourselves.”

It is unknown in what form the archdiocese obtained any video, although in its letter to NCR, the archdiocese said it “was obliged to use the footage in order to disprove Sister Lears’ advocate’s initial denial of Sister’s presence at the ceremony.”

Sources had told NCR that Lears’ files also contain photographs of her taken at the ceremony, including at least one of a close up of her lapel identification tag.

Sean Collins, who worked as co-pastor at St. Cronan Parish until he resigned last week so that he could speak publicly about the case said: “I have been close to Louise throughout this canonical process and at no time has she or her advocate denied that she was present at the ordination.”

NCR sent an e-mail to the St. Louis Office of Communications July 15 with questions aimed at clarifying the disputed evidence and surrounding issues. The Office of Communications offered no one to be interviewed.

Some of the questions NCR asked of the archdiocese included the following:

• Did the archdiocese give permission for someone to attend the ceremony as a witness?
• Is there a document acknowledging this?
• If the archdiocese gave permission to someone to attend as a witness, did that person provide any photographs or digital recordings to the archdiocese?
• Is there a document in Lears’ file backing the claim that her advocate denied her presence at the ceremony?
• Would the archdiocese allow Lears’ files to be made public if she would give permission?

Fox can be reached at tfox@ncronline.org

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